Cocktail Chronicles
An excellent blog by a man who has more cocktail books than I thought were published.

cocktailnerd
Gabriel has crafted a fine site and shares some of my pain with a state-run liquor system. He also manages to post about 4000 times more than me, and it’s always interesting!

Dave’s Drinks
Anyone who posts about exotic cocktails makes it on this blogroll!

Days That End In “Y”
An all-around drinking blog that posts quality news on the world of spirits, beer, wine, gadgets… the list goes on, as do the posts, which are too numerous to count. “Updated frequently” would be an understatement.

Dr. Bamboo
A fellow Pennsylvanian with a penchant for art and fine cocktails.

Favorite Posts

“I’d like a Martinez, heavy on the vermouth, warmed in the microwave for 23 seconds.”

What’s the difference between a chilled cocktail and an Arctic-cold cocktail? One word: perfection. The colder you can get a drink and the longer you can keep it cold, the better.

I could make this article a treatise on the importance of ice, but you probably wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t understand its vast importance in the crafting of a cocktail. What I do want to do is take you from a cold cocktail to a cocktail that refreshes, bites, and makes you want to put on a coat. If by the end of this experiment, I have created a method that makes a wonderful drink that’s 3°F colder, I will feel that I have succeeded. I will be using the Fancy Gin Cocktail throughout this test, as it is a fine concoction and benefits greatly from chilly temperatures

Fancy Gin Cocktail

2 dashes simple syrup

1 dashes Angostura bitters

1 dashes orange curacao

2oz gin

lemon twist

Stir (or shake) with ice, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist the lemon peel to release its oil, and drop it in.

Experiments

Stirred for 30 seconds | 27° F | Chilly, but not as much as I’d like. The water content could be increased ever so slightly.

Stirred for 1 minute | 24° F | Now we are getting somewhere; those 3° really made a difference in the bite of the cocktail, and the amount of water was nearly perfect.

Stirred for 30 seconds with cracked ice | 24° F | The final result of this method is nearly identical to the previous.

Stirred for 60 seconds with cracked ice | 21° F | Some would consider the water content to be a touch high, but I think the extra chill may make up for it.

Stirred for 30 seconds with crushed ice | 17° F | Wow. You can tell that the viscoity of the drink has changed; it’s a bit thicker than before. If my old scotch knowledge is still in tact, this fact is confirmed by the drink’s legs. Surprisingly, even with the use of crushed ice, the water content is a little low. The coldness nearly makes up for this, but I think a touch more water would make this perfect.

Stirred for 60 seconds with crushed ice | 17° F | The 30 extra seconds did nothing for the water content. The ice just must be too cold to melt any more.

Conclusions

I was able to drop the temperature 10° from my initial method with the only difference being the use of crushed ice instead of full-moon ice. I’m guessing the biggest factor in me being able to get my drinks this cold is that the ice starts at -8° F. I cannot back this up with evidence, but my freezer does go up to 7° F, so perhaps I will redo the test at some point with the higher temperature. My only suggestion for getting your ice colder is to stick it outside if you live in a frigid climate.

I wasn’t 100% happy with the final water content of the 17° cocktail, but it was the best, by far.

Future tests will include shaking as a method, and hopefully a new cocktail. And if you’re wondering, I did this test over the course of a couple of weeks, as it included many tests that I did not post, in addition to what you see above.

I’d make the argument that there’s a temperature below which a drink is too cold – it’s just hard to reach that point. You could *maybe* get closer using the jet freezer to yield ice that’s at -20 degrees? At some point it’s going to have to taste less good, or be painfully cold, or both. Liquid Nitrogen Cocktail!

I definitely agree. Getting the right amount of melted ice in the drink was really key in this experiment. I would like to try the 17° method with a few other cocktails (e.g. martini, rob roy) too, as I wouldn’t want to prescribe it as “the method” for everything.